Microsoft Ends Work on Microsoft Flight

Microsoft has stopped all work on Microsoft Flight, the successor to Microsoft Flight Simulator. No official announcement at the product’s website yet, but various sources, including Kotaku, have posted a statement from the company:

Microsoft Studios is always evaluating its portfolio of products to determine what is best for gamers, families and the company, and this decision was the result of the natural ebb and flow of our portfolio management. Many factors were considered in the difficult decision to stop development on “Microsoft Flight” and “Project Columbia,” but we feel it will help us better align with our long-term goals and development plans. For “Microsoft Flight,” we will continue to support the community that has embraced the title and the game will still be available to download for free at http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/.

Apparently, most of the team that was working on Microsoft Flight has been laid off, so it’s not clear if Microsoft has any plans for its line of flight (and flight simulation) products. For now, the core of Microsoft Flight Simulator X lives on in Prepar3D, developed by Lockheed-Martin.

Update July 28, 2012:
Microsoft has posted the following statement on the Microsoft Flight website:

We know there are a number of questions out there in the community about the discontinuation of development for Microsoft Flight. We wanted to make to be sure to clarify a few things. While we will not be continuing active development, we are committed to keeping Flight available for our community to enjoy. All the content you have paid for is still valid, and the content that is available for sale will continue to be available on http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/. If any further information becomes available for us to share, we will do so.

Using X-Plane Situations with “Scenario-Based Training”

My new book, Scenario-Based Training with X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator: Using PC-Based Flight Simulations Based on FAA-Industry Training Standards, is now available. If you use X-Plane, you should be aware that the Situations posted for download from the book’s page at the publisher’s website may not work with your version of X-Plane.

When I asked about compatibility last year, I understood that the Situations I created while using X-Plane 9 would work with subsequent versions of the simulation. But according to recent email from the developer, the file format changes “a lot,” and he explained that “i am working to make the situations more robust in with-standing file-format changes in the future, but have not yet done so.”

It’s not practical to update all of the Situations every time the format changes–one of the features of X-Plane is frequent updates, even between major versions.

My best advice? If you can’t load the Situation files provided to complement the scenarios in the book, you can use the descriptions of each lesson to quickly set up the Cessna (or your choice of aircraft) at the location where a particular virtual flight begins. As noted in Chapter 10, “Using the Scenarios in This Book,” the Situations are just starting points; they’re not interactive “missions” (see especially p. 109-110). For more information about X-Plane and Situations, see Chapter 6, “A Quick Guide to X-Plane” and the help resources described there.

SimLink96 connects a Garmin x96 portable GPS to FSX

Flight1 Aviation Technologies has released SimLink96, a $49.95 utility that connects a Garmin GPSMAP 196, 296, 396, or 496 to Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

I’ve been testing it on my system, and it’s slick way to practice using one of the above portable GPS models or to enhance virtual flying by adding a real GPS to FSX. You run the GPS in simulator mode and it receives position and other data from FSX. You can use the functions of the x96 that are available in simulator mode, including routes.

Note that in addition to the software, you need:

A Garmin 010-10141-00 PC Interface Cable (a serial cable available from Garmin and many online retailers). The USB cable that Garmin provides to update databases and transfer routes won’t work for sending position data to an x96.

If your computer doesn’t have a 9-pin serial port, you also need a serial-to-USB adapter (I use a TrippLite U209-000-R) or a serial port on a card, like this.

It’s also important to note that because you must use the Garmin PC interface cable, you must run the x96 off its internal battery while running SimLink96.

You can get more information and download SimLink96 from the product page at Flight1 Aviation Technologies.

Colossus

 

It’s a commonplace that today’s cell phones pack more computing power into their ingestible form factors than, say, the clunky boxes stuffed into the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules (v. the interminable re-runs of Apollo 13). Today’s news, however, puts Moore’s Law into an interesting new perspective.

"Colossus cracks codes once more," from the BBC, reports on efforts by computer enthusiasts to test a rebuilt Colossus (image above), a computing machine used to crack German codes at Bletchley Park during World War II, against modern PCs. As the BBC story notes, Colossus "was one of the first ever programmable computers and featured more than 2,000 valves and was the size of a small lorry."

(The British have an uncanny ability to resurrect technology of a certain age; cf. Vulcan to the Sky, the project that recently returned a RAF Avro Vulcan bomber to the air.)

The test involves radio messages transmitted from Paderborn, Germany (home to the world’s largest computer museum, definitely worth a visit), which will be intercepted and fed into the machines for decryption. Results of the experiment should be available soon. You can even play along at home; see the instructions here.

[Update: The results are in. Colossus II cracked the most difficult message in about four hours. But Joachim Scheuth, a computer enthusiast from Bonn, beat the venerable valve-powered behemoth with a custom program on on a PC.]

I’m no computer scientist, however, so the BBC headline, "Colossus cracks codes once more," caught my eye for a different reason. I immediately flashed back to Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), a War Games prequel probably recalled only by me and my fellow reveler in obscure sci-fi movies, Hal.

Walls O’ Blinky Lights, IBM Selectric Interface, and Ominous Computer Voice aside, Colossus: The Forbin Project is an entertaining tale that stars Eric Braden and Susan Clark and features Marion Ross and Georg Stanford Brown. Sadly, Dana Andrews’s agent overlooked this opportunity. Maybe Andrews was exhausted from Crack in the World and The Frozen Dead (alas, neither available on DVD).

But I digress. To burrow further into the story of Bletchley Park, too often hidden in the umbra cast by the Manhattan Project, see the following:

• The Code Breakers and Seizing the Enigma by David Kahn
• Breaking the Code, a movie about Alan Turing, starring Derek Jacobi (much better than Enigma, which was entertaining in its own way)